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Tabula rasa

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It has been a long hiatus from diaries but I'm back!

Day 1/90 detox
31/12/2020 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (yoga)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (1:45am)

This diary entry is for last Thursday. Slept fairly late since I was up watching live new years celebrations shows.

Managed to study for a bit and sort of self discovered a technique which seems pretty obvious but was a moment of realisation for me as someone who has the traits of a perfectionist - rather than spending an exorbitant amount of time on a question or concept that is particularly difficult, it’s okay to skip it and come back to it later. This ensures that I don’t tunnel vision on one thing, where the time could better be spent studying other concepts and with additional knowledge, may assist with the problematic concept/question. This can be applied to any task really, to try and set a reasonable amount of time for each task and if it’s taking too long, to complete other tasks first and in that time, new perspectives could be gained.

Not doing well for habits in the mental health department, like meditation and reading, however. Workouts have been quite consistent though.

Day 2/90 detox
1/1/2020 Friday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (bushwalking)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (6:20am)

This diary entry is for last Friday. I went out with friends to go bushwalking. What a great start to the year! I’ve really been meaning to go do some activities outdoors and this was the perfect opportunity to. I didn’t do any other dailies today however and I slept very, very late as there was some time sensitive finance related tasks I was looking into. They couldn’t really wait till the next morning.

Day 0/90 detox
2/1/2020 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? Yes
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (3:45am)

This diary entry is for Saturday. I went to a friend’s place for a party and we played board games for the majority of the time. I’m pretty proud of myself for excusing myself near the end of the night after they decided they wanted to play Jackbox/console games next. However, this was a sort of a trigger for me since I wanted to understand more about how to play Katan (board game), since that was the first time I had played it. I watched a few hours of videos of gameplay online and so I’m once again resetting my days in the detox to 0.

Day 1/90 detox
3/1/2020 Sunday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (push)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (8:05am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 2/90 detox
4/1/2020 Monday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (8:20am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 3/90 detox
5/1/2020 Tuesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (5:40am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 4/90 detox
6/1/2020 Wednesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (5:07am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 5/90 detox
7/1/2020 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (6:52am)

This diary entry is for yesterday. Essentially, I have a finance related task that is fairly time sensitive and is ongoing in my life. It consumes a lot of my time and I lose track of and deprioritise my daily tasks for it. This diary entry along with the following few are pretty similar. I have since developed a plan to prevent the need for me to stay up late.

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Day 6/90 detox
8/1/2020 Friday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (running)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 11:59pm

This diary entry is for yesterday. Resetting my daily schedule is now on track. Most dailies were completed including sleeping before midnight and ideally pushing that to even earlier later. I went over my study materials but only briefly so I wouldn’t count that as actually studying.

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Day 7/90 detox
9/1/2020 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)
Study? Yes (‘break’)
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. While I was listening to a Ted podcast, I came across a statement that was a little mind blowing for me: “Our ability to follow through on our best intentions, to get into a new habit, or to change our behaviour in any way, doesn’t depend on the reasons we might do it, or the depth of our convictions that we should do so. It doesn’t depend on our understanding of the benefits of a particular behaviour or even on the strength of our willpower. It depends on our willingness to be bad at our desired behaviour.” The speaker went on to explain how she got back into running after a long hiatus, not by creating a detailed, well defined, extravagant plan, but by simply setting a goal of running for 1 minute every day. Here is the source of the podcast and is very well worth the listen:

https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_carter_the_1_minute_secret_to_forming_a_new_habit

The above got me thinking the significance of ‘something’ over nothing especially with respect to daily habits. Therefore, I have begun to implement the same logic, by doing each task at least 1 minute every day and denoting this as a (‘break’) next to it if that was the case, but by doing this, will help with developing a routine in my subconscious of doing these tasks daily, regardless for how long.

I slept late since I procrastinated through the day and didn’t do my tasks until late at night and essentially did all of them after I heard that podcast!

 

@codepants - I'm trying the 1 minute strat for my workouts!
 

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On 1/10/2021 at 1:23 AM, Tabula rasa said:

The above got me thinking the significance of ‘something’ over nothing especially with respect to daily habits. Therefore, I have begun to implement the same logic, by doing each task at least 1 minute every day and denoting this as a (‘break’) next to it if that was the case, but by doing this, will help with developing a routine in my subconscious of doing these tasks daily, regardless for how long.

Curious to see how this turns out for you. Good luck and keep us posted.

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Day 8/90 detox

10/1/2020 Sunday

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? Yes (pull)

Study? Yes

Duolingo? Yes

Reading/podcast? Yes

Meditate? Yes

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:50am

This diary entry is for Sunday. Managed to do all dailies except for sleep. Might even add a streak if I do all dailies where sleep isn’t counted – 2.

 

Day 9/90 detox

11/1/2020 Monday

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 3

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? Yes (yoga)

Study? Yes

Duolingo? Yes

Reading/podcast? Yes

Meditate? Yes (break)

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. Today was a work day. Started too late on my dailies. Bumping my alarm which reminds me to start prepping for sleep to 9pm now.

 

Day 10/90 detox

12/1/2020 Tuesday

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 4

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)

Study? Yes

Duolingo? Yes

Reading/podcast? Yes

Meditate? Yes

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 12:35am

This diary entry is for yesterday. Today was a work day. Started earlier on my dailies and winded by sleep time back 1 hr. Rest of dailies were done. Getting there!

Edited by Tabula rasa
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Day 11/90 detox
13/1/2020 Wednesday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 3:27am

This diary entry is for Wednesday. Had work and didn’t manage to do all my dailies. Don’t really remember why I stayed up so late.

Day 12/90 detox
14/1/2020 Thursday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 1
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (yoga)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:31 am

This diary entry is for Thursday. Had work and managed to do all my dailies with the exception of sleep. Wasn’t disciplined enough to sleep before midnight and was procrastinating.


Day 0/90 detox
15/1/2020 Friday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0
Play games / watch game related videos? Yes
Workout? Yes (running)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 5:41am

This diary entry is for Friday. I didn’t have work today and ended up playing an online Blackjack game. I can identify what the trigger was and it was to do with researching for board games to buy so that I can play with my family. Everyone is on their devices all the time so I thought it would be a good opportunity to ‘bring the family together’. However, one thing led to another, where I was researching which board game to buy, then my mum suggested one, then I decided to play the online version, then I ended up playing a different game I had never played before.

This has led me to believe that I don’t think I can play board games without triggering a want to play games and thus I am scrapping that plan altogether and I’m not going to even give board games as presents in the future so that I can avoid having to look at this topic. It’s just a red zone for me now. This still leaves the question of parties and how it’s almost unavoidable playing board games. I think how I will approach parties is that I will only spectate and not play the board games, but only play casual games like ‘Cards against Humanity’, rather than the competitive games (where competitive seems to be the trigger).

I slept very late because of that and I deleted the game account after, however, I do think I am understanding more about where to draw the lines in terms of how to avoid my triggers. Back on track we go!

Day 1/90 detox
16/1/2020 Saturday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No (break)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 4:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. I woke up very late due to my sleep time of the previous day. I was quite occupied today due to my ongoing finance related task. Due to changing circumstances, the plan that I developed to prevent the need for me to stay up late isn’t working too well, however, I have a revised plan that I will be testing. No dailies were done today.
 

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Day 2/90 detox
17/1/2020 Sunday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 1
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)
Study? Yes (break)
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. Managed to do all dailies and also attend a Toastmasters session. It really does wonders for self confidence and is a great socialising space. Sleep is still an issue.

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Day 3/90 detox 

18/1/2020 Monday 

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’) 

Study? No 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? Yes 

Meditate? No 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:00am 

 

This diary entry is for yesterday. Had work, didn’t manage to do all dailies and sleep is still an issue.

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On 1/19/2021 at 8:00 AM, Tabula rasa said:

Day 3/90 detox 

18/1/2020 Monday 

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’) 

Study? No 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? Yes 

Meditate? No 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:00am 

 

This diary entry is for yesterday. Had work, didn’t manage to do all dailies and sleep is still an issue.

I've found most people with these committed lists never stick to it because it makes "living" feel like work. Maybe there's a new way for you to just enjoy your days and being more in the moment? Instead of holding yourself to these schedules you can be more present. Say it's 4 PM you can say ok, I'm kind of hungry, let's meal prep. Or it's 7 PM, I kind of want to do a new hobby. This also lets you relax. I think when you have too many things to monitor and plan you just look for the first chance to take a break. It starts with only having time to breathe around bed time, but then you stay up late because you finally have time to relax.

We can't be productive all day. I think quitting games makes people think they need to be productive all day long. I've been successful for 2 years because I just sit there and do nothing for certain periods of the day and relax my brain. It can be annoying sometimes, but overall I feel less stressed and have no triggers to relapse.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Day 33/90 detox
17/02/2021 Wednesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and situps)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:20am

This diary entry is for yesterday. I’m back after a long hiatus of not recording diary entries. Since my last entry, I have not played games (pretty much didn’t even think about it) and have been working. The finance related activity that I have been doing occupied a lot of my daily time and had been eating into my sleep to the point where I can’t really afford to continue like this (extremely tired during the day). I also have my studies starting soon so I have deprioritised the finance activity for now.

@BooksandTrees I have this list mainly because I read a book called ‘The Slight Edge’ and it’s about how consistently doing habits daily will result in the benefits gradually building up over time to the point where it becomes noticeably obvious versus someone who doesn’t do them. E.g. exercise, taking care of your body/mental health, learning, etc. These habits are always in the back of my mind now so whenever I don't do them for a period of time, I start actually craving to do them or 'get back on track'. I think the streak system I made might be pushing it too much though so I have removed that!

It sounds like you do something similar to meditation where you don’t do anything for certain periods of the day. I personally find it very hard to do nothing unless I am meditating and will instead use my time procrastinating and watching random videos so I feel like I am required to be doing something if not resting/sleeping.
 

Edited by Tabula rasa
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Day 34/90 detox
18/02/2021 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:40am

Had work, didn’t manage to do all dailies and sleep is still an issue.

Day 35/90 detox
19/02/2021 Friday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No (break)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 7:10am


Day 36/90 detox
20/02/2021 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 3:20am
 

Not doing well in terms of habits.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
12 hours ago, Tabula rasa said:

Day 0/90 detox

27/07/21 Tuesday

Once again, I fell off the path. Uni has started so my short term goal is posting every day regardless of if I managed to keep my detox streak or not, as well as studying daily.

Starting the detox again.

Glad you're getting back on the path so quickly! Good luck, uni can be stressful at first. 

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  • 3 months later...

01/11/2021

Checking in. It's been ages.

I tried to start my detox yesterday but the next day (today) I immediately fell back into old habits of gaming. Final exams are coming up and I think that is the trigger. The least I can do is be accountable for it so my short term goal is to start the detox again and to report in daily.

0/90 days

 

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